Tuesday, December 18, 2012

France Sexy No More for Entrepreneurs Escaping Hollande: Taxes
- (www.bloomberg.com) Hollande’s hitting businesses and individuals with at least a dozen new
measures, including a 75 percent levy on income of more than 1 million euros,
to narrow the budget gap. “France is no longer a sexy place to be,” said
Rosenblum, founder and former owner of Pixmania, an online seller
of computers. “To attract and keep business and jobs you have to put on your
best face, especially in tough economic times. With all the costs, the taxes
and the social pressure, France looks more like an old maid to me.” Rosenblum
-- who says he’s leaving France with his wife and two little children this
month to open a new business in a country he won’t disclose -- is among people
fleeing a slew of levies announced by Hollande since the Socialist president
was elected in May. The 75 percent millionaire tax was followed by new levies
on capital gains, an increased
tax on income and wealth, a boost to inheritance charges and an exit tax for
entrepreneurs selling their companies.

Kicking
widows to the curb, the sad fallout of excessive senior debt - (www.ochousingnews.com) Geraldine Bates lost her husband to kidney failure last year. Now, she
has fallen behind on her mortgage payments and is terrified that she will lose
her home in Jacksonville, Fla. Ms. Bates, 70, is caught in a foreclosure trap
that is ensnaring widows across America: she cannot get help lowering her
payments until her name is added to the mortgage note, but the lender says she
must be current on payments before that can happen. I’m surprised lenders would
have such a requirement. Why would they want to limit anyone from assuming
responsibility for repaying a loan? The reality is that they don’t. Lenders are
merely using this obscure provision they wrote into the contract to compel
surviving spouses to dip into savings to make good on overdue payments. It’s
backfiring on them when the surviving spouse doesn’t have the savings to dip
into.

Fed’s Dudley Sees Obstacle in Mortgage Bond, Rate Spreads -
(www.bloomberg.com) Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William C. Dudley said a
wider gap between yields on mortgage-backed securities and home loans is
reducing the potency of the central bank’s monetary stimulus. While there is
“solid evidence” the Fed’s monthly purchases of $40 billion in housing debt
have been effective in lowering yields, “the impact of monetary easing on the
economy through housing and mortgage finance has been impeded to some degree,”
Dudley said today in opening remarks at a workshop on mortgage rates held at the New York Fed.

French auto market faces worst year since 1997: CCFA - (www.reuters.com) The French
auto market is on course for its worst performance in 15 years in 2012, the
CCFA industry association said as it reported a 19.2 percent drop in November
new car registrations. The CCFA forecast on Monday that the French market would
decline by 13-15 percent this year, most likely around 14 percent. This
compared with its previous estimate of a drop of at least 12 percent. "That
will give us a market that will be below 1.9 million vehicles in 2012, and you
need to go back to 1997 to find a worse year," CCFA Chairman Patrick Blain
told reporters. November declines were led by France's Renault and Japanese
partner Nissan, and U.S. automaker General Motors (GM.N), according to the
latest CCFA figures.

SF
Housing Director "incompetent bully"- (www.sfgate.com)The San
Francisco Housing Authority, which runs more than 6,000 units of public housing
for the city's poor, is headed by an executive director who discriminates
against white employees in favor of African Americans and regularly employs
offensive, outlandish language and behavior in the workplace, according to a
lawsuit filed by the agency's own lawyer. The suit, filed in San Francisco
Superior Court by the agency's assistant general counsel, Tim Larsen, paints
executive director Henry Alvarez as a
mercurial bully - a description echoed in interviews with The Chronicle by
several others who have had close contact with Alvarez since his arrival at the
Housing Authority in 2008. Alvarez was recruited by Mayor Ed Lee, who was the city administrator at the time, from the
Housing Authority in San Antonio to lead an agency that has had a series of
leaders ousted or scrutinized. During Alvarez's tenure, the agency's federal
scorecard has gotten worse, and housing advocates say Alvarez's leadership
hurts those who need housing the most.